Summary

An intimate, myth-shattering new biography of Mary Queen of Scots by a premier historian that draws on a trove of newly discovered sources.Queen of Scots,the first full-scale biography of Mary in more than thirty years, offers a singularly novel, nuanced, and dramatic portrait of one of historys greatest women.John Guy draws on sources -- many previously unstudied -- as varied as the secret communiques of English spies and Mary's own letters.Dispelled is the ingrained popular image of Mary as a romantic leading lady, achieving her ends through feminine wiles, driven by love to murder, undone by passion and bad judgment. We come to see her as an emotionally intricate woman and an adroit diplomat, maneuvering ingeniously among a dizzying array of factions who sought to control or dethrone her. Guy's investigation of Mary's storied downfall throws sharp new light on questions that have baffled historians for centuries, and offers convincing new evidence that she was framed for the murder for which she was beheaded.

Author Notes

Born in Australia in 1949, John Guy grew up in England. Early in life Guy developed a love of history. He pursued that interest and read History under the supervision of Professor Sir Geoffrey Elton, the pre-eminent Tudor scholar of the late-twentieth century. John Guy took a First and became a Research Fellow of Selwyn College in 1970. Awarded a Greene Cup by Clare College in 1970, he completed his PhD on Cardinal Wolsey in 1973 and won the Yorke Prize of the University of Cambridge in 1976. John Guy has lectured extensively on Early Modern British History and Renaissance Political Thought in both Britain and the United States. He has published 16 books and numerous academic articles.

Guy's book My Heart is My Own: the life of Mary Queen of Scots (Harper Perennial, 2004) won the 2004 Whitbread Biography Award, the Marsh Biography Award, was a finalist in the USA for the 2004 Biography/Autobiography of the Year Award (National Books Critics' Circle), and has been translated into Spanish and Czech. Other books include Thomas More (Hodder Arnold, 2000), and The Tudors: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 1990). For over twenty years he was co-editor of the acclaimed academic series Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History; and co-author of The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and contributed to The Oxford History of Britain, The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, The Oxford Illustrated History of Tudor and Stuart Britain, and The Oxford History of the British Isles: the Sixteenth Century.

(Bowker Author Biography)

SD_ILS:1270457

9780060586447

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